Display devices such as a cathode ray tube (CRT) or a flat display panel provide a video image for viewing. The display panel is generally comprised of glass and includes one or more layers of an antistatic and antireflective coating on its outer surface for reducing light reflections which degrade the video image. With the increasing emphasis on viewer ergonomics, providing these types of display devices with an antireflective characteristic has become of critical importance to the general acceptance and commercial success of the display device. Because of the composition of the different layers employed, a multilayer coating is typically applied by either chemical vapor deposition (CVD) or physical vapor deposition (PVD). The complexity and high cost of applying a multilayer coating by either of these approaches has precluded this type of coating from gaining widespread commercial acceptance.
Other display panel coating approaches employ a single layer where the antireflective and antistatic components are mixed together to form a single solution a applied as a one-layer coating. Still other approaches first apply an inner antistatic layer followed by an outer antireflective layer to form a two-layer coating. The single and two layer approaches typically employ a liquid spin method of application of the layer, or layers, which method is widely used in the display device industry. However, the single layer or two-layer approach is characterized as providing an antireflection capability over only a limited bandwidth.
The present invention addresses the aforementioned limitations of the prior art by providing a multilayer antireflection coating for the glass display panel of a video display device which affords a broadband antireflection capability where each of the layers may be applied using conventional liquid spin techniques.